Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method for operating a production and packaging installation for hygiene products, such as diapers, sanitary napkins or the like, and to a production and packaging installation for hygiene products, such as diapers, sanitary napkins or the like.
Prior Art
Developments in recent years have led to the performances of production machines which are intended for producing hygiene products, and are used in a corresponding production line, advancing more and more. Accordingly, the performance of the packaging machine, which follows in the production process, has to keep pace, so that the products produced can be processed at the predetermined speed. As an alternative to this, the prior art, albeit only very infrequently up until now, has taken steps to use in each case two identical packaging machines in a production line. In other words, in the case of this concept, a production machine is assigned two packaging machines. In the prior art here, the number of hygiene products produced is split in half, following a fixed pattern, between the identical packaging machines. The packaging machines are arranged along a conveying path of a cyclically moving grouping conveyor which receives products coming from the production machine and has a plurality of holders or compartments for the products. Each holder of the grouping conveyor is filled with an unalterable number of hygiene products which is stipulated prior to the beginning of production. The products are then fed from the holders, following a fixed pattern, either to one packaging machine or to the other.
It is disadvantageous here, inter alia, that the two machines can produce only respectively identical sizes of multipack or packs with in each case an identical number of products contained therein. Also disadvantageous is the fact that the entire installation comes to a standstill as soon as one of the two packaging machines fails.